Kids` Curiosity Draws Them To Computers

December 20, 1985|By Linda McIntosh.

``I`d rather work on a computer than watch TV,`` says Siaze Issa, 11, as he types commands into an Apple computer at the Maywood Public Library. It is Saturday morning and a lot of kids have left their TV screens to get a turn on the computer. ``Kids come here all the time to use the microcomputer,`` says Pat Dewey, who set up the computer at Maywood.

Issa used the library to study computer books and taught himself to program in BASIC. He uses the computer almost every day to type his school reports. ``I like most to teach my big brother computer tricks,`` says Issa.

Like Issa, many Chicago-area kids are learning about computers--studying books, taking classes and experimenting. ``I wanted to learn about computers because they`re part of the future--everything`s going to be computerized,``

says Roger Chiang, an 8th-grade student at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

One of Chiang`s classmates, Anna Krishnaiah, wants to learn how computers work. ``They seem so complicated when you watch someone else using them,`` she says.

Curiosity draws many kids to the computer. They hear a lot about computers, they see their friends using them, so they want to find out what they can do with one.

``I like to experiment on my computer to see what it can really do,``

says Dennis Lin, a University of Chicago High School sophomore who developed a program that quizzes him in a German vocabulary.

Experimentation can lead to big things. When Keith Goldberg, 16, of Highland Park experimented on his family`s home computer seven years ago, he inspired his father to start a software publishing company called Microlab. Keith later helped test some of Microlab`s computer games.

Now Goldberg runs his own electronic bulletin board system (BBS). He is known as the zyzop or SysOp (system operator). To set up this bulletin board, he created several files inside his computer that other home computers could access through a telephone linkup. Keith spends about two hours a day updating the computer files, answering messages and making sure the system runs smoothly.

Corie Welsh, 13, of Crystal Lake likes to log onto Goldberg`s BBS to meet people. ``When you log onto a BBS,`` says Welsh, ``you never know who you`ll talk to or what you`ll talk about--that makes it a lot more interesting than watching TV.``

Karen Abt, 13, of Arlington Heights uses her computer almost exclusively to hook up to a kind of electronic clubhouse in Schaumburg called the GameMaster Mansion ``I meet a lot of interesting people in the GameMaster

`parlor,` `` says Abt. ``We talk about everything--games, school, work and politics--we don`t even know each other`s ages, and we`re not nervous about talking because we can`t see each other.``

Like other teenage hangouts, however, some BBSs are plotting grounds for mischief, like breaking into business computers via telephone. Some BBSs list the phone numbers to the computers of large corporations. Kids sometimes pool their information on a BBS and then compete to see who can crack the computer`s password and get in.

One hacker on the North Side admits that he has access to phone numbers for computers at banks, credit card companies and Army bases, but he says he does not try any pranks because security measures are tight. Breaking into computers seems to be less popular now that some hackers have been arrested and many companies have improved their security.

In the western suburbs, a hacker known as ``Shadow Lord`` says a lot of hackers in his neighborhood got scared when a kid was suspended for breaking into the school`s computer.

``I can see how it may be a challenge to break into a bank`s computer,``

says a teenager from the northern suburbs, ``but I wouldn`t be stupid enough to go in and change people`s bank accounts.``

Some hackers have turned their ingenuity from cracking passwords to pirating software. On certain BBSs known as AEs (for ASCII Express), members can copy software posted there for general use.

Shadow Lord explains why pirating software is popular: ``If we trade the same copy of a game instead of copying it, we would lose our places in the game, and we`d lose interest. We don`t have enough money to buy new games all the time and we get tired of playing the same ones.``

The software industry is not particularly sympathetic to this reasoning, and is lobbying for new laws that would keep tabs on hackers and their BBSs.

Not all hackers, however, break into banks or pirate software. In fact, the word ``hacker`` means different things to different kids.

According to Scott Stenger, 16, of Lake Forest, ``A hacker is someone who sits on the computer all day and `phases out` the rest of the world.`` Stenger says he is not a major hacker because he hasn`t used his computer in a week.

To Keith Goldberg, ``A hacker is someone who is not afraid to go inside a computer program and redesign it to create something new.``